Standing in the Rain
by KitKatt0430
Summary: Caitlin's life has been rather tumultuous since the accelerator accident of 2013. But somehow, things got better when Barry Allen woke up in the cortex. A handful of prompt fills for the Snowbarry Summer Lovin' 2019 Challenge.


Summary: Caitlin's life has been rather tumultuous since the accelerator accident of 2013. But somehow, things got better when Barry Allen woke up in the cortex.

Notes: A handful of prompt fills for the Snowbarry Summer Lovin' 2019 Challenge. (Two from the challenge, two borrowed from other places.)

The first three prompts are SnowBarry and the third is SnowBarryWest

_**Standing in the Rain **_

**"They stood under the rain, laughing until she was half sure she was sobbing."**

Caitlin had been through this before.

Last time she'd buried an empty casket, stood red eyed and cried out while Cisco held her hand and a priest said empty words about Ronnie's life. It was easier this time, though. The casket was already buried and grass was growing over the mound with his name on it. Cisco wasn't here this time, but Barry was. Ronnie's parents were absent too and thus couldn't glare at her as though leaning on a male friend for support were some great betrayal of her love for Ronnie.

She was red eyed again, though. Cried out from sobbing in the car earlier. Not sure she could do this - walk across the graveyard and place flowers on Ronnie's grave. Barry held her the whole time, not saying a word, just running his fingers through her hair in a silent promise that she had his support.

If she'd wanted to leave, to try again later, he'd have let her. Somehow, that had given her the strength to try now.

"It's easier this time," she finally said. "Harder too." Caitlin had lost her fiance last time. This time it was her husband.

"Do you want to talk about him?" Barry asked quietly. "I didn't know him very well. I wish I'd gotten the chance... the way he made you smile made it clear he was pretty special."

"He was special," Caitlin agreed. "You two would've gotten into so much trouble together as the Flash and Firestorm and..." she trailed off and put the flowers down. Then she put her hand on the gravestone. "He liked you already, you know? I told him you and Cisco were the ones who helped me remember how to enjoy life again. Ronnie was so glad I had the two of you there for me."

Above them, the sky rumbled ominously. The gray clouds promising rain that the forecasters had sworn would pass them by darkening and lingering instead.

"Looks like it's going to storm," Barry muttered, scowling up at the sky.

"Are you okay?" Caitlin frowned, concerned. She'd noticed over the last year that the speedster always seemed uncomfortable during storms.

He nodded and offered her a wan smile. "I'm fine. Just... not a fan of lightning, funnily enough. Take your time, Caitlin. I'm here for you."

"Thanks, Barry." Caitlin tucked some stray hair behind her ears and then sighed. "He's not really here. It just feels weird standing over an empty grave. It didn't help the first time around and I think maybe it's even less helpful now when I know that when this got done, Ronnie was still alive. And almost no one knows that. His parents will never know. With everything that happened with Eiling, we never had a chance to have his death legally overturned, so... officially speaking, Ronnie Raymond died December 2013, not May 2015." The headstone on the grave, of course, read 2013. "Sometimes it feels so unreal. Like he was never really back at all. That his survival, our wedding... it was all just a dream."

A splash of cold water hit Caitlin's nose and she looked up at the sky. It wasn't raining yet, but a sprinkle here and there was clearly a warning of what was to come. Yet there was still the sun in the sky behind them, shining brightly down on them even as the grey clouds continued their steady march to blot out the sky.

"We should probably head back to the car," Caitlin observed, regretting that the flowers she'd brought would be ruined so soon.

Barry nodded and offered her his hand, which she took as they started off towards the distant parking lot.

"He would forget to put in for his PTO sometimes," Caitlin said suddenly. "Or he'd put in for the wrong dates. Hartley hated being Ronnie's manager because of that, though Wells always gave Ronnie a pass for it. Cisco's first day at STAR Labs, Ronnie and I were going on vacation. We'd planned it over a month in advance, been talking about it for weeks, and then Hartley was blindsided by us leaving because he thought for sure it was the following week. Turned out Ronnie'd mixed up the dates when he'd put in for PTO, requested the week after we were actually scheduled to go. I hated having to apologize to Hartley for sniping at him, especially when he'd been so awful to Cisco. But... apologizing was the right thing to do. I made Ronnie apologize too, before we left." Caitlin sniffled and walked closer to Barry, letting him drop her hand in favor of putting an arm around her shoulders.

The sprinkling of rain picked up from a few drops here or there to a slow, steady mist. But their pace seemed to slow instead of pick up.

"Not long after we got back from that vacation, Cisco and Ronnie became best friends. And they started playing pranks together."

"Oh, really? This I've got to hear." Barry grinned.

So she told him about the computer mouse in the jello prank they pulled on Hartley. His real mouse had been fine, but they'd hidden it while using a broken mouse of the same type to make it look like the irritating genius would have to find a new one. In fact, they'd 'hidden' the real mouse in Dr. Wells' office and he'd gleefully returned the mouse to Hartley when Rathaway showed up in Harrison's office ranting about the lack of respect he was shown.

"Oh, and Hartley? Happy April Fools Day," Caitlin intoned in a mimicry of Wells' voice that had Barry laughing. She immediately started recounting the prank war they had against each other, super gluing each others tools to the ceiling and putting salt in the other's coffee. "They conscripted the interns at one point and I had to put my foot down about my office being neutral ground. But when they wouldn't stop I... uh, I bribed their interns to join my side with brownies and then we locked them in a closet. I told them they weren't getting out of there until they promised no more pranks."

"So Caitlin wins the prank war," Barry grinned. "Congratulations."

She giggled. "We should have a new prank war. Pick a weekend so we're not going on forever, but... you, me, and Cisco. No powers," she added, giving Barry a sharp look.

He smiled a touch too innocently, raising his free hand to do a scout salute. "On my honor, no powers."

"I'll have to ask Iris if you were a Boy Scout," Caitlin muttered, getting another laugh from her companion.

"I've been in a few prank wars myself," Barry told her with a grin. "Never actually won any, though. The last time Iris and I had one, she added dye to my body wash and my skin was streaked green for nearly a week before the last of it wore off."

Caitlin laughed at the image that conjured. The rain picking up further as they came to a halt, Barry rubbing her shoulders as they stood under the rain, laughing until she was half sure she was sobbing again. Carefully, Barry's arms folded around her, rocking them back and forth as he murmured in her ear, "it's gonna be alright, Cait. It's gonna be alright."

* * *

**Coffee Shop (Setting)**

"She likes you," Caitlin assured Barry as they settled at the table with their coffee.

Barry grimaced, however, which was not the reaction Caitlin had expected at all, what with how well the two had gotten along in the ordering line. "She's Joe's partner. I don't want to be following in Iris' footsteps by dating Joe's partner. And... honestly, we're too much alike. It'd be dating the girl version of me, which is just weird."

Caitlin snorted into her coffee, feeling at once amused and relieved. "Okay, that's true. The only way she'd be more like you is if she were a CSI instead of a Detective."

"I think she wants to be a CSI," Barry said. "She's got practice exam books, like the ones you'd need to study up for the CSI certifications and the GREs. So I'm not even sure she's going to be sticking around for long, if she's planning on going back to grad school. None of the local colleges offer good criminal forensics programs, so the closest school she'd be going to is Opal City University, my alma mater."

"I hope that goes well for her," Caitlin hummed thoughtfully. "I almost didn't go back for my masters, but I was glad I did. And my PhD too."

"I wish I had the time to get a doctorate," Barry sighed, sounding rather rueful. "Couldn't afford it before... and now that I can afford it, I've got too many commitments on my plate." CSI, the Flash, fighting Zoom... too many commitments indeed.

"You'll find the time eventually. Maybe once Zoom's gone and things quiet down..." Caitlin smiled, "I'm sure if you talk to Captain Singh about it, he'd do what he can to help you take your career where you want it to go."

Barry nodded with a grin. "He would, at that." He glanced away, looking oddly pensive. "So, what about you and Jay?"

"What about Jay?" Caitlin asked, confused.

"He likes you," Barry told her, raising an eyebrow when Caitlin blushed.

"Ah, well, yes. He does. It's flattering, but..." she absently twisted her fingers around where her wedding ring to Ronnie had ever so briefly sat.

"Too soon?" Barry asked, eyes gazing knowingly at her fidgeting hands.

"Yes. But also..." Caitlin flushed and looked away herself this time. "There's someone else I'm interested in. I'm just... not ready yet."

"Oh, really?" Barry grinned and leaned in. "Do tell. Who's the lucky guy?"

"Well... you could say he runs in the same circles as Jay," Caitlin offered, chest suddenly tight with worry.

"Runs in the same..." Barry trailed off and Caitlin could practically see comprehension dawn in his eyes. He blushed and ducked his head, smiling widely. "Well, you should ask that guy out then. When you're ready, that is. Because I have it on good authority that he'd love to date you."

Caitlin felt butterflies take over as the tight feeling went away. She beamed back at Barry. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

**"Sometimes, being a complete nerd comes in handy."**

"Lucky you already had tickets to this convention," Caitlin observed as she looped her day pass over her head.

"I've always been interested in programming," Barry told her. "If I hadn't gone into forensics, I'd probably be a software engineer. But right now programming is more of a hobby, with my main focus being keeping up with new developments in learning programs and AI. Especially now that I know I'm supposed to invent Gideon one day." He frowned and glanced around, "where'd Cisco get off to?"

"There was some panel on refining search algorithms he wanted to check the time on. I think he's interested in how it might get applied to the meta alert program," Caitlin replied. "I told him to meet us back here in ten minutes, no later. Which means it'll probably take him fifteen once he gets distracted by something else along the way."

Barry snorted in amusement and then glanced around the packed conference hall. "Okay, so if I were a technopathic meta with a grudge against someone who stole my research and then patented it, where would I be hiding..."

"They'd need somewhere comfortable to sit with their laptop open, where it won't look out of place for someone to have 'dozed off' while they're mentally checked out," Caitlin replied. "If what we saw last time was any indication, it takes their entire focus to control computers on that scale."

Barry nodded. "There's usually a designated quiet area at these things, for people who need to decompress from all this over crowding..."

"How many of these conferences have you been to?" The tickets had been fairly expensive, from what Caitlin had seen. Not that she and Cisco had paid for their's, which she felt a little guilty about. Cisco had hacked the system and added them to the list of registered guests.

"This is the third one I've been to in Central City, though I attended two others in Opal City while I was at grad school," Barry said, adding, "I won my first tickets in a student lottery. My roommate won them the following year, but ended up having to miss out because he had the flu. Told me to go in his stead and take plenty of notes, so I was Mark Jones for three days. I saved up to pay for the last two, but this one I actually won at trivia night at a pub not far from my old apartment. Went with some of the off site CSIs a couple of months ago and, well... sometimes being a complete nerd comes in handy."

Caitlin sighed as her phone buzzed with a text. When she glanced at it, sure enough, Cisco had been side tracked by science. "Cisco's gonna want to make this a yearly thing, I can tell already. We've lost him."

"So much for fifteen minutes?" Barry laughed, checking out his own phone. "Yeah, Cisco is 'investigating' the lecture halls. Right, well, want to check out the quiet areas and the lunch hall with me?"

"Sounds good," she said, snapping off a reply to Cisco that he'd better meet them at Professor Redfern's lecture in an hour, since that's when the meta they were looking for had threatened to utterly destroy Redfern's life. Considering the last attack had led to Redfern nearly being electrocuted, they needed to be sure the Flash was on hand just in case they couldn't stop the meta - Techno, as Cisco had dubbed them - from following through on their threats again. And while Barry was busy keeping Redfern safe, she and Cisco would have to snap some meta cuffs on their target.

Barry offered Caitlin his arm, which she latched on to with a smile.

* * *

**Pancakes**

Caitlin blushed faintly as Barry brushed something - lint maybe - off her shoulders while they worked on making pancakes. Both regular and banana pancakes, plus there had to be enough for two speedsters, one cryo-kinetic meta, and a regular human.

This wasn't her first time having breakfast with Barry and Iris. They'd had a few breakfasts and brunches together over the years. But that had been as friends, not...

She'd stayed the night with them for the first time last night, Killer Frost echoing in her head as she kissed Iris and Barry... had sex with them for the first time. They'd been courting her slowly for nearly a year, though it took Caitlin nearly six months and some change to realize what they were hinting at, what things were slowly building up to between the three of them. And it led to this lovely moment. Quietly domestic as she and Barry made food and Iris and Nora, who'd arrived some twenty minutes ago, went through old year books and discussed that one time Barry blew up the chemistry lab.

"It really wasn't my fault," Barry was grumbling. "Our teacher was a hack. He mislabeled some of the chemicals. We're lucky it just blew up, because some of those chemical combinations could've knocked us out and asphyxiated the whole class."

"He's not wrong," Iris allowed with a grin. "But the chemicals you thought you were mixing together would've knocked the door off its hinges anyway."

Barry ducked his head. "No idea what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh."

Caitlin felt warm all over, as though she belonged here, with them. And, for the first time, the idea that Nora was as much her daughter as she was Barry and Iris' began to feel tangibly real.


End file.
